[Bernard]

Toward the end of my time as a frequent business flyer, it was common for me to be number 47 on the free upgrade list, out of 76 people on the list, for a United flight from Boston to Chicago. (Pick the numbers; the point is that 2/3 of the passengers on a Thursday or Friday PM flight from one major city to another was frequent business flyers.)

And FC would be 8 seats total. And maybe a total passenger capacity of 100-120.

[Organic Panic]

I use to fly back and forth to Germany every two weeks and racked up at least a million miles. Aside from the baggage allowance it wasn’t worth bothering using miles. When I would try to use miles they sent me all over. One example was trying to fly from SFO to LAX. Seems easy since there are probably a hundred flights a day, right? BUT they wanted to make the route through Chicago, to Phoenix, and then finally LAX making a one hour flight a full day of travel. And in all thos years I only got the “free” upgrade once.